


The Next Best Thing

by LadyLan



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 11:34:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5455094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLan/pseuds/LadyLan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke Griffin is a practical person. So when she catches her boyfriend in bed with someone else, she takes matters into her own hands. To remedy her lack of sexual experience, she enlists the help of her friend’s older brother. He’s a teacher, after all, and it doesn’t mean anything. Until it does, and attraction can be such a slippery slope.</p><p>A modern Bellarke (that’s so ridiculous I’m not even sorry).</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Next Best Thing

It's been an exceptionally shitty Thursday.

She has a Thursday evening study group, but after a long day of premed coursework, ignoring lunch in favor of sketching on the campus green space only to be interrupted by freezing rain, and – the cherry atop a shit day – a phone call with her mother, Clarke decides to go home. She won’t be able to concentrate anyway, not with the words from her mom’s lecture fresh on her mind.

So she takes the stairs up to her third-floor flat, unwinding her scarf and fantasizing about taking off her shoes and vegging out on the couch. Maybe with some chocolate. Or wine. It was such a spectacularly bad day, Clarke decides on both. 

Tossing open the door to her, she tugs off her shoes. They drop to the floor with echoing thuds before the door is shut behind her. The pantry offerings are sparse, but Clarke knows about Finn’s secret stash of cookies in the freezer. They’re also out of wine, but there’s plenty of liquor so she plucks a bottle of whiskey from the shelf and sets it on the table.

Then she hears it.

It being carnal, feminine laughter coming from her bedroom. Clarke blinks, takes a swig from the bottle since she isn’t an idiot and has a fairly good idea of what’s going on, and closes the short distance between the kitchen and bedroom. When she yanks the door open she’s greeted by the sight of Finn – her boyfriend – naked. With a woman.

A woman Clarke recognizes, actually, though not a woman she's had the pleasure of meeting in person until this moment. Clarke can’t remember her name, but the dark haired woman sprawled across her sheets is definitely Finn’s high school girlfriend. Pretty, Clarke thinks, vaguely aware that she should be mad. Upset, at least, that her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend is naked in her bed.

Finn told her once that he still loves his ex, but that the distance between their universities had put a strain on their relationship and they’d parted ways. But Clarke has always suspected… Well, suspected that something like this would happen.

She just stares, a bit wide-eyed, as Finn scrambles to grab clothes. He thrusts – bad word choice, Clarke decides – _pushes_ a shirt at the woman who is in no apparent rush to cover herself.

“Who’s the chick?”

“I’m his girlfriend.” Clarke frowns as she hears the words, her voice sounding a bit strange and faraway. She also feels a bit like an idiot, and though she has a lot of unsavory qualities, a lack of intelligence is not among them. So she corrects herself, “Former girlfriend.”

And since that is all she has to say, Clarke leaves. With steady hands she grabs her book bag and shoes by the door, and stuffs the whiskey and cookies in her bag. Finn’s calling after her, his socks slipping on the hardwoods. 

“Clarke…”

Perhaps there’s something wrong with her, but she shrugs her bag over her shoulders and feels …. Curious. Still not particularly angry, and though she searches for it she can’t even manage to feel sad, but she does have the burning question of _why_ at the tip of her tongue and she can’t help looking at Finn.

“Raven just showed up. I wasn’t expecting to see her. I thought, I thought she and I were over.”

Clarke frowns. “Funny. I figured you two were over when you invited me to move in with you.”

His face crumples and now Raven is out of the bedroom and dressed, her arms crossed and a single, arched brow raised.

“You didn’t say you had a girlfriend.”

And Finn has the gall to look guilty.

Clarke sighs. She’s done a shitty job packing but she can come back and regroup later, say something mean and maybe throw some things. For now, she needs out of here. Raven tosses a butter-soft leather satchel over one shoulder, looking pissed at both of them. Even though she should hate the girl, Clarke asks if she needs a ride.

“Sure. You can take me to the train station.”

Inside Clarke’s car, it’s stuffy. Silent. She isn’t mad at Raven, but she’s processing why Finn had hopped into bed with another woman. Finn was a good, decent guy. A bit too passionate, too invested. The kind of guy who wore his heart on his sleeve. The kind of guy who’d admitted, time and time again, that he was still in love with ex in the early hours of the mornings when confessions didn't seem so threatening.

Still. That still didn’t make fucking her okay. Clarke’s knuckles are turning white so she loosens her grip on the steering wheel.

“He certainly hopped into bed with you pretty fast.”

From the passenger’s seat, Raven stares at her cuticles. “Maybe you’re bad in bed. Maybe he’s just a two-timing asshole. Neither of us stuck around, so I guess we’ll never know.”

But that thought lingers as she drops Raven at the train station. It haunts her as she drives to Jasper and Monty’s with a backpack full of coursework and booze, for the first time feeling a tad vulnerable as she asks if she can stay the night.

It lingers in the back of her mind as she watches her friends joke and play video games and avoid questioning why she’s shown up.

By the following morning, Clarke approaches the day with a clearer head. She goes to class and scribbles in the margins of her notebook during the boring lectures and listens intently to Dr. Heavener since his anatomy tests are spectacularly difficult.

She manages to eat lunch under the heated shelter of The Pavilion and lets her mind stray.

Clarke has always been a practical person. She’s as determined as she is dependable. She’d give her left hand – which she needs for surgery and sketching – for one of her close friends, but she’s also logical to a fault.

Raven planted the infection but Clarke had let it fester. She’d had sex with one person in her entire life. Good, decent sex but it wasn’t… earth-shattering. And maybe therein lay the problem.

When she returns to Jasper and Monty’s apartment she isn’t surprised to find their neighbor Octavia there, helping herself to a slice of pizza. Octavia and Jasper are slackers with comparatively easy majors who’d designed their schedules to have Fridays off, and Monty is smart enough that he doesn’t have to attend his classes to ace them.

“Hey Clarke,” Octavia says. “I hear you’re crashing with the guys for a bit.”

Not sure how long ‘a bit’ was, Clarke shrugs. “Looks like it.”

“So,” Octavia continues on through a mouthful of pizza. “What’re we doing tonight?”

“Whad’ya want to do tonight?” Monty asks, and of course O wants to dance and get shit faced so that’s what they do. Jasper is dopey in love with O and Clarke can’t blame him since she’s a knock-out. They close down their favorite local pub, and when they return to the apartment Octavia passes out on the couch.

Which is Clarke’s temporary bed. She frowns, her senses blurred by the alcohol and her ears buzzing from the bar’s speakers. Deciding water and fresh air are the best remedies, she pours herself a glass and steps out onto the balcony.

Leaning over the railing and looking out across the twinkling lights of the island, Clarke brings the glass to her lips and takes a sip.

“What are you wearing?”

She jumps and makes an unattractive show of coughing up the liquid. Turning to find Octavia’s brother sitting on the neighboring ledge, watching her with a frown, Clarke places a hand over her chest and says,

“Shit Bellamy. Are you trying to kill me?”

He doesn’t respond. His eyes drop to her black pants and sparkly top and she sighs.

“I borrowed O’s clothes.”

He nods, as that explains why she looks removed from her usual, practical self, and returns to the book he’s reading and Clarke just… stares. Because Bellamy Blake looks nice sitting beneath the tricky dim lighting of the porch lamps. The breeze blows some of his soft curls across his forehead, a nearly-invisible spray of freckles bridges his nose, and his dark, dark eyes concentrate on the pages of his book with the kind of cocksure intelligence that leaves Clarke feeling a little…

She bites down on her lower lip, continuing her assessment. Bellamy was handsome. She’s noticed when he’d go out to drink with the gang from time to time, and she’d noticed during her second semester introductory history course where he’d been her TA.

Clarke might've noticed, sure, but never before had she required his signature brand of confident experience.

“Hey, Bell?”

He glances up, looking as though he’s forgotten she's there. He frowns because he recognizes the look on her face, the spark in her eyes hinting at her surprisingly keen mind for warfare and strategy. He’d read over her papers regarding Sun Tzu’s works with shaky hands, because Clarke Griffin could’ve led an army with her knack for stratagem. It was as impressive as it was frightening.

“Princess?”

“I have a proposition for you.”

He looks wary. He should be wary, Clarke knows, and in her Board of Directors stance she smiles without a trace of shame. 

“It has come to my attention that I don’t have much sexual experience.”

He looks a little pale, and she continues,

“So I need you to have sex with me. For research purposes.”

There. Bellamy was a graduate history student. He loved research, practically lived for it. But instead of jumping up and down, he looks at her like she just asked which direction space was.

Okay, fair. Clarke leans her backside against the balcony railing and frowns into her glass of water.

“Finn slept with someone else, and that someone else mentioned that it was due to my inexperience. And she’s right, but with practice I excel at things. So I need you to have sex with me, give me a few pointers – you know, for science.”

Terror tugs at his expression. “Shit Clarke. You’re serious.”

“Of course I’m serious.” She leans forward a bit, hoping a flash of skin, the deadliest weapon in a woman’s arsenal, will work to her advantage. “So?”

“Absolutely not.” And he doesn’t even glance at The Cleave, his eyes wide and intent and not straying from her face.

She sighs and straightens. “Fine."

“And you’re … You aren’t going to go find someone else for a practice fuck, Clarke.” His brows narrow and her stomach feels a little fluttery. He looks… disappointed in her. And she’d always been under the impression that Bellamy thought she was rather impressive. “You’re smarter than that.”

“It’s just sex. It doesn’t have to mean anything.” Bellamy had meaningless sex all the time. Her glare hardens at his hypocrisy, his judgement. “You’d be helping a friend out.”

“And what do I get?”

With an innocently timed blink, Clarke says, “You get to have sex with me.”

He stands there, like he might maybe possibly be considering it. “You’re drunk. Get some sleep.”

“I’m not that drunk.” She can’t deny that she isn’t a tad intoxicated. Her cheeks flush in the cold but the ringing in her ears had subsided. “Will you consider it when I’m sober?”

“Clarke…”

“C’mon Bell. You’re a teacher. This is what you do, right? Teach, inspire confidence.”

“I don’t teach my little sister’s friends… it’s sick Clarke.”

She sighs and drops onto one of Jasper’s metal chair. The cold seeps through her clothes. Bellamy relaxes beside her, turning back to his book, but from time to time she feels his eyes on her. Deciding whether or not to take her offer seriously. Or perhaps he’s determining if she requires mental help.

“You should go to bed.”

“Your sister’s asleep on the couch.”

“Fine. You can sleep on our’s. But that doesn’t mean…” He can't even say it and the pink on his cheeks is rather endearing.

Hopping over the railing, Clarke stands on his balcony and he shakes his head, a smirk tugging at one corner of his mouth. He opens the balcony door and invites her inside the familiar apartment which is always cleaner than Jasper and Monty’s, even though O lives here and she's a slob. The TV is on, playing a loop of the news, and Clarke attempts to make herself comfortable on the sofa while Bellamy shuts off the light. The room is bathed in flickering, blue light. Clarke pulls a blanket to her chin and notices the way Bellamy watches the newscast. She remembers he’s a bit of a student activist, a chancellor of the poor who fights for scholarships for his most promising students. He’s a good person. If she’d given him a less selfish reason, he’d probably sleep with her.

It’s the last thought she has before she drifts off, and when she wakes up the smell of coffee pulls her away from the sofa. Clarke ruffles her waves which have gone from sexily disheveled to homeless, and between her hair and Octavia's clothing she feels ridiculous. Bellamy is at the table, sipping coffee, and he doesn’t say anything as she pours herself a cup and drops into the chair across him.

“So? Did you give it any thought?”

He glances up from the paper. “Give what any thought?”

“Sleeping with me.”

His face falls. With a sigh of defeat, he says,

“Let me finish my coffee first.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hate making Finn a jack-hole. I'm actually pretty neutral toward him, but I do apologize for taking the low road and using him as a plot-device.


End file.
